A VirtualBox machine with the name 'homestead' already exists

Question

Since homestead 2.0 homestead laravel has not been working

I don\'t know why \'homestead init\' creates a Homestead.yaml file in mydirectory/.homestead and not in

Answer 1

Renaming an already existing default VM

Disclaimer

The following procedure will destroy your VM and may be only suiteable in a desting-environment like mine! For production environments, consider to repair the association like described here

I had this problem after overriding the default name of an already existing VM by using

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.define :ubuntu_test

where the VirtualBox name was also set (as a newbie I assumed that Vagrand will use this name too)

config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
     vb.name = "Ubuntu-Test"
end

By adding config.vm.define it seems that Vagrant doesn't associate the VirtualBox VM any more with the Vagrant file since even vagrant destroy -f say VM not created but vagrant up throw this error

A VirtualBox machine with the name 'Ubuntu-Test' already exists.

To delete those zombie VM

1. If the VM is running, stop it first: vboxmanage shutdown (Here the name is Ubuntu-Test)
2. Get the Id by running vboxmanage list vms
3. Delete it: vboxmanage unregistervm --delete
4. Now your VM can be re-created using vagrant up
5. Using vagrant global-status --prune, your new name is present